Judging books by their covers,
November 2003.

And Now You Can Go
Vendela Vida
Jacket design: Chip Kidd
Images: (top) James Adkins;
   (bottom) Gunnar Smoliansky/Photonica
Knopf

This cover has been haunting me. Much like Julie Orringer’s book How to Breathe Underwater, every time I’ve gone into a bookstore lately, Vendela Vida’s novel calls me over and makes me stare at it.

Like the Orringer cover, everything is slightly off, and again, we’re in the hands of a master. Literally, as it turns out.

Surprising as it may seem, when I’m choosing which books to review, up to this point I haven’t checked to see who the designers are until I need that information for the review. That’s not because I don’t care who’s designed it; it’s more because I’m not likely to recognize the person’s name anyway. Now that I’ve examined some fifty covers in depth, however, certain names are beginning to recur, for better or worse. Still, they’re only familiar because they’ve popped up here previously.

But when I turned over to the back cover of this book and saw Chip Kidd’s credit, it was like running into Michael Stipe on the street. Kidd is something of a design superstar, with many hundreds of book covers to his credit. Not everyone loves his aesthetics (REM’s not to everyone’s taste, either), but I think most people, surveying his work, would agree that he’s got chops.

This cover may not appeal to everyone, but I like it. I think Kidd renders his collage with both audacity and authority. The jacket also reminds me of an artist whose work I used to head straight for every time I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, James Rosenquist. This is his Vestigial Appendage (1963):

Like Rosenquist, Kidd throws together disparate elements that initially seem to clash but end up blending together in a very satisfying way. The deli ticket commands attention from across the room, but once it does, you’re drawn into the play between the other images. The title is abstract enough that it becomes just another element in the piece, yet one that is right up front despite its relatively small size. The author’s name is cleaved by the ticket and thrown off-center as a result. In the end, the focus is on the whole as well as its individual pieces, and though the pieces seem like literal references to the book, the overall cover feels abstract. It seems like a combination very few people could pull off, but Kidd does it.

Judgment: Even now that I recognize more designers’ names, I’m still not going to look at the credits before I decide whether to review a cover.